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Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, by Christine Garwood
PDF Download Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, by Christine Garwood
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Contrary to popular belief fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the earth was round. The idea of a spherical world had been widely accepted in educated circles from as early as the fourth century b.c. Yet, bizarrely, it was not until the supposedly more rational nineteenth century that the notion of a ?at earth really took hold. Even more bizarrely, it persists to this day, despite Apollo missions and widely publicized pictures of the decidedly spherical Earth from space.
Based on a range of original sources, Garwood’s history of ?at-Earth beliefs---from the Babylonians to the present day---raises issues central to the history and philosophy of science, its relationship to religion and the making of human knowledge about the natural world. Flat Earth is the ?rst de?nitive study of one of history’s most notorious and persistent ideas, and it evokes all the intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual turmoil of the modern age. Ranging from ancient Greece, through Victorian England, to modern-day America, this is a story that encompasses religion, science, and pseudoscience, as well as a spectacular array of people and places. Where else could eccentric aristocrats, fundamentalist preachers, and conspiracy theorists appear alongside Copernicus, Newton, and NASA, except in an account of such a legendary misconception?
Thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating, Flat Earth is social and intellectual history at its best.
- Sales Rank: #440659 in Books
- Published on: 2008-08-05
- Released on: 2008-08-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.08" h x 1.44" w x 6.86" l, 1.56 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 448 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Garwood, historian of science at the Open University in England, presents a thoroughly enjoyable first book. Examining the belief that the world is flat from a wide array of perspectives, she makes some important points. She demonstrates quite convincingly, for example, that, contrary to what most people believe, the ancients knew the world was not flat: the earth has been widely believed to be a globe since the fifth century B.C. Only in the 19th century did acceptance of a flat earth spread, promoted largely by biblical literalists. Garwood does an impressive job of comparing those flat-earthers with modern-day creationists. She also makes the case that it's all but impossible to argue effectively with true believers. Modern believers assert that the space program is a hoax. In 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon, a Washington Post poll estimated that approximately 20 million Americans thought the landing was staged on Earth, underscoring that some outrageous beliefs still hold sway. Garwood is respectful throughout, analyzing the philosophical underpinnings of those who have doubted, and continue to doubt, the Earth's rotundity. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“An energetic, all-inclusive, and amusing account of man’s impressive capacity for self-delusion. Every creationist should read it.” ---Steve Jones, author of Darwin’s Ghost
“Highly entertaining and often hilarious.” ---Sunday Telegraph
“The focus of Garwood’s impressive research is a forgotten episode
in the history of science.” ---New Scientist
“A glorious romp around the world of Flat Earthism.” ---Daily Express
“Garwood’s often hilarious book is a serious look at an aberrant belief and those who took it up in modern times, centuries after the ?at Earth had been scientifically dismissed. . . . Garwood’s books shows just how doggedly faith in an unscienti?c idea can hold.” ---The Commercial Dispatch
“[A] quirky and highly entertaining slice of intellectual history. Elicits plentiful laughter and astonishment.” ---Sunday Times
“Wonderful . . . dispassionate, and understanding.” ---Financial Times
About the Author
Christine Garwood studied history as an undergraduate and was later awarded a doctorate in history of science. She has been a Research Fellow at the Open University and is currently a freelance writer and researcher.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The earth is flat, really, go look at a horizon. Read the flat earth books.
By Dennis Gannon
Really the history of a correct idea. Those who disagree with it, probably have never read the books Christine mentions. They probably still believe every NASA movie studio production that even high schoolers have debunked on YouTube as obvious fakery and fraud. The naysayers do not believe their eyes when they see a flat horizon with no curvature. They don't believe their own sense of motion when they feel they are not moving at all, but "science" says they revolving at 1000 MPH at the equator. So who are the idiots? They can't believe NASA, for the excuse of "national security" lied to the world, and continues to lie with the fake International Space Station movies. I wonder how many of the infidels still believe the Warren Commission and everything they were programmed to learn in school.
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
A Bad Idea Whose Time Never Ends
By Rob Hardy
You remember the story about the frightened sailors who went with Columbus in 1492, but were sure that they were going to sail off the edge of the world. They almost mutinied, they were so scared. But Columbus got to land rather than to the enormous cataract, proving to the satisfaction of everyone ever since that the world was not flat but round. If you do remember all this, perhaps you also remember being told it was all bosh, but perhaps not; the story of Columbus bravely proving the world was round is such a satisfactory myth that it will probably never die. In _Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea_ (Thomas Dunne Books), Christine Garwood, a historian of science, starts with debunking this myth, but then shifts to the modern flat-earthers, those from the nineteenth century until now who insisted, starting with the Bible as a foundation and attempting to co-opt science in the flat-earth cause, that the "globularists" were involved in a scandalous conspiracy to turn people away from the Bible. Garwood's often hilarious book is a serious look at an aberrant belief and those who took it up in modern times, centuries after the flat Earth had been scientifically dismissed. Flat-earthism may be nonsense, but it was an anti-science stance taken up by those who believed in a literal Bible, and as such, comparisons may be easily drawn between flat-earthers and creationists.
Educated medieval people did not believe the Earth to be flat. In fact, if they studied their Plato, Aristotle, or Euclid, they knew the shape of the Earth. The Columbus story was appealing to those who unnecessarily wanted to promote a view of science in eternal warfare with religion. The dispute between the two realms over the shape of our Earth seemed to be settled, but was revived in England by a loud, smart, confident, and energetic socialist quack from Lancashire, Samuel Birley Rowbotham, who started touring England in the 1830s. He urged people to take the Bible literally and also just to look around: anyone could see we were not walking around on a sphere. The Earth was a stationary disk, he taught, and the Sun was only 400 miles above it, and if ships disappeared over the horizon, it was just a play of refraction and perspective, not evidence that the surface of the water was curved. He had many followers, and Flat-earthism didn't stop with the Victorians. There were Flat Earth Societies of different kinds during the twentieth century. The American fundamentalist preacher Wilbur Voliva took over the utopian city of Zion in Illinois, and used his radio station in the 1920s not only to broadcast intimidations of hell-fire but also to spread such explanations of sunrise and sunset being only optical illusions. The Canadian Flat Earth Society is different from any other group described here, since it was not religiously inspired. It was a bunch of writers and philosophers who took up the cause as a bit of serious fun, to push concepts of epistemology. To poor, serious Samuel Shenton, founder of the International Flat Earth Research Society, fell the task of defending the concept of a flat Earth while astronauts went around it and to the Moon. He asserted that Christ himself had warned of "a great deception which might shake frail Christian faith," and he was furious that astronauts had radioed "the opening verses of Genesis... as a deceptive cloak" concealing the promotion of globularism. The new flat-earthers were eager to promote their own "scientific" views, but their arguments harked back to those of the previous century. For instance, they asserted that people could sail east to west around the world just like a needle sails around a phonograph record, but no one sails around it north to south, because that would take one into the edges of the disk, a realm of forbidden cold. Others also pointed out that in sailing from Australia to America, a passenger did not get on board ship upside down, and did not sail upwards around a globe. And of course, the ocean looked flat during the whole trip.
Almost all the flat-earthers here mount their beliefs from knowing that, as one wrote, "the Bible is a flat-earth book", and from feeling that God had called them to refute astronomical treachery. In many ways, they were more fundamentalist and more literalist than the current creationists; indeed, the head of the International Flat Earth Research Society of America denounced the Creation Research Institute as a "criminal gang" and "the worst enemies of the truth" for ostensibly defending the Bible while it was actually undermining it. The flat-earthers had faith that could not be shaken by anything scientists had to offer. Science eventually had even photographic proof, but the pictures of our orb were denounced as a hoax that "just makes the whole Bible a big joke." The faith of some flat-earthers was strong enough to withstand, for a while, at least, even science's photographic assault. Garwood draws analogies, of course, between them and our creationists whose faith is also currently great enough to withstand scientific objections, and who, like the flat-earthers, insist that accepting science is the same as discounting the Bible. In the current case, though, scientists can't muster, for instance, simple photographs that show evolution in progress. Garwood's book shows just how doggedly faith in an unscientific idea can hold.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The Earth is Flat? Really? Here is an Excellent Account of the History of this Belief
By Roger D. Launius
The idea of a flat Earth has always been with humanity, and evidence to the contrary has not always been persuasive for those with a desire to believe the Earth is flat. Christine Garwood's fascinating history of belief in the flat Earth lays out ancient ideas from Greek theorists to arrive at a set of assumptions about the nature of the Earth ranging from a flat disc concept advanced by Homer to the sphere envisioned by Pythagoras. This was not formally set until the sixteenth century, but numerous groups have emerged since then to question this conception and flat Earthers exist to the present.
Garwood begins with a bit of debunking of the myth that Western Civilization believed that the Earth was flat in 1491 and it took Columbus with his idea of sailing to India by way of traveling West to break that longstanding tradition. She notes that educated society certainly understood the truth about the nature of the Earth as a sphere and Columbus's bold initiative had less to do with a flat Earth concept than other concerns. Even so, her real contribution is in documenting the persistence of an idea of a flat Earth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The longstanding presence of this idea is perhaps best explained by the perspective of humanity as it was limited to the surface of this planet. As recently as 1945 belief in a flat Earth was listed as the second of twenty critical errors in history. Garwood introduces such fascinating individuals as Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884), who took the pseudonym "Parallax," and began what he called "Zetetic astronomy" to promote a flat Earth theory. This "Zetetic" theory has fueled the modern concept of the flat Earth and it persists with formally organized groups to the present. Sometimes those adopting this belief, such as Wilbur Glenn Voliva and his followers in the utopian community of Zion, Illinois, were motivated by biblical fundamentalism. At other times, such individuals as Robert L. Schadewald led opposition to a spherical Earth for seemingly cantankerous reasons. All of these groups, and many others, are described in this insightful history.
One of the most interesting organizations in this arena was the Flat Earth Society of Canada, organized in 1970 by Professor Leo Ferrari, St. Thomas Aquinas University. Ferrari took a decidedly post-modern approach to this subject and argued for personal decisions about the nature of the Earth. He asked everyone to overturn the authority of experts in favor of their own observations, and asked if individual perceptions were that the Earth was round of flat. It represented a fascinating and cockeyed perspective on modern society, made all the more so by outrageous street theater from Ferrari's group.
This informative and engaging book is certainly the current state of the art when it comes to research into belief in the flat Earth.
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